“She’s never known anything else.”
The fact remained that when Diane spent the weekend at home she found it difficult to maintain her self-control. When she saw Célia in her mother’s arms, crushed with love, she remembered the embrace of the woman who had once been her goddess, and she felt the abyss of despair open inside her once again.
At lunch on Sundays, she waited impatiently for her aunt to arrive, for this meant salutary distraction. And on Sunday evenings, when she once again occupied her quarters at her grandparents’, she let out a sigh of relief: the ordeal was over. Safe and sound, she could reconnect with ordinary life.
She was an excellent pupil, and both her teachers and schoolmates valued her presence. She was a good classmate and had neither enemies nor immoderate friendships. A well-adjusted little girl, who hid her wound well.
Even if it was not premeditated, it somehow suited her, not to have a best friend. She had observed the way the mob behaved: telling secrets, going to slumber parties, and sometimes even going so far as to cry on the chosen one’s shoulder. Diane viewed these practices all the more dimly in that she could not allow herself to indulge in them. How could she have confessed her secret to anyone?
Her grandfather occasionally tried to bring up the subject with her:
“You know, your mother was a temperamental child. She didn’t have good grades at school, and got demerits on her report card for her unruly behavior. At home she could sulk for hours and you never knew why. How can you expect her to see herself in you, when you are first in the class, you smile all the time, and everyone likes you?”
Diane didn’t answer. Could there be an explanation for her pain? Her mother didn’t realize she was being cruel. She seemed convinced she was an excellent mother. Marie shared a trait of ordinary people, when she came out with nonsense like, “You know me, I always want to be fair,” or, “My love for my children is more important than anything.” The little girl watched her closely when she voiced this sort of statement: her mother actually believed what she was saying.
Deep down, Diane thought people were crazy. For mysterious reasons, her grandparents had been spared this collective dementia. She had eventually concluded that even her father and brother were infected by it: her father did not see anything pathological in Marie’s maternal attitude, and her brother merely put up with it. As for everyone else, to be sure, it was none of their business, but how could anyone fail to marvel at the sight of this woman who, except during the school day, went absolutely everywhere with Célia? Olivier went no further than a half-hearted attempt to dissuade his wife from continually carrying a four-year-old child around in her arms:
“Honey, it’s bad for your back.”
In fact, Diane was sorry her mother took his comment into account. If she had gone on making a public display of carrying around a child who was clearly too old for it, people might have begun to notice just how pathological her behavior was.
As if she’d been reading Diane’s thoughts, Mamie said, “What can we do? Your mother isn’t deranged enough for us to intervene. She’s not a good mother with you, or with Célia. But the law can’t do anything about it.”
All the more so as Nicolas was there to attest to her mental health: with him, Marie behaved like a normal mother, affectionate and reasonable. How could anyone qualify as toxic a family environment that had begotten such a well-balanced boy?
On Friday evenings, when Diane went back to her family, her father threw his arms around her and cried, “My princess.” Her brother kissed her and showed her his new treasures: tennis shoes, comic books, Duplo sets. His mother merely muttered, “Oh, so you’re here,” and went on her way, accompanied by her satellite, Célia. Célia venerated her sister but didn’t dare show it in front of her mother.
When Diane questioned Nicolas, all he did was shrug and say, “Maman is nuts around Célia, that’s all. Everything else is fine.”
“What does she say about me when I’m not here?”
“She never talks about you.”
When Célia turned six Olivier decreed that she couldn’t go on sleeping in the same room as her parents. They put her in Diane’s room, where there were now two beds.
Diane went into a mood when they confronted her with the fait accompli. The first night with Célia was trying. For a start, she had to put up with the endless farewell between mother and daughter: “No, my darling, I’m not abandoning you. It’s just at night, it won’t be for long. You’re a big girl now, you can’t go on sleeping with Maman and Papa. Your big sister will watch over you.” All of which was repeated a dozen times, with tears on the part of both child and mother.
Olivier eventually came to get his wife, asserting it was time to let the little girls get to sleep. Need one point out that Diane was not entitled to any sort of goodnight from her mother?
No sooner were they alone than Célia rushed over to her sister’s bed.
“Maman said you have to watch over me.”
“Leave me alone, I’m sleeping.”
“I’ll scream, and Maman will scold you.”
“Go right ahead.”
Overawed by such firm behavior, the likes of which she had never seen, the little sister put her arms around the big one.
“I love you, Diane.”
“What’s gotten into you?”
“Why aren’t you here during the week? I love you so much. I feel better when you’re here.”
“Yeah, really.”
“No, it’s true. Maman loves me too much, she never leaves me alone.”
“You love it, and you always ask for more.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
Diane could sense the truth of her words and she turned to her sister.
“You have to tell her it’s not okay.”
“But I love Maman.”
“Of course you do. And that is precisely why you have to tell her, because you love her. You have to tell her she has to leave you alone, that all her kisses are making you sick, and she’s keeping you from growing up.”
“You tell her.”
“If I tell her, she won’t understand. It has to come from you.”
“When should I tell her?”
“When you’re alone with her. And now go back to your bed.”
“Please, can’t I sleep with you?”
“Okay. Just tonight, then.”
The little sister snuggled up against her big sister. Diane couldn’t help but feel a certain tenderness. Célia was adorable—it was undeniable. She fell asleep with her arms around her.
The next morning, when their mother called Célia for her bath, Diane suspected her sister might take this opportunity to speak to her, so she hid behind the door.
“Maman, you have to leave me alone,” she heard.
“What are you saying, sweetie?” asked Marie, with alarm in her voice.
“You have to leave me alone. You’re making me sick with all your kisses.”
“Don’t you like my kisses?”
“Yes, but there’re too many.”
“Forgive me, my darling,” replied the mother, on the verge of tears.
Diane held her breath. So it worked! And then she heard:
“Diane told me to tell you.”
“Ah! Now I understand. Your sister is jealous, that’s all.”
“Why is she jealous?”
“Because I don’t give her as many kisses as I give you, sweetie.”
“Why don’t you give her as many kisses as you give me?”
“Because she’s cold. And she always has been. Do my kisses really bother you?”
“No, Maman, I love them.”
The big sister, who by then had heard enough, went away, distraught. She sat down on her bed and thought: Jealous, me? Whatever next! And if I behave coldly towards you, Maman, it’s because you’ve forced me to be that way.
At the age of eleven Diane felt her world collapsing around her. She’d managed to survive thus far because
she thought her mother was blind to her suffering. Now she had discovered that, in her mother’s version of events, she was at fault for her mother’s lack of tenderness. There was something almost comical about the accusation of jealousy. How could she go on living, stifled as she was by this feeling of insane injustice?
She went through the rest of that Saturday like a zombie. That night, Célia joined her in her bed. Diane didn’t move.
“I talked to Maman.”
“I know, I heard.”
“Eavesdropping is naughty.”
“You’re right, go and tattle on me to Maman.”
“She said that—”
“I know what she said. You’re an idiot, Célia, to have told her I had anything to do with it. You lied. You’re the one who came and complained to me. I will never trust you again.”
“What does that mean, trust?”
“It something you certainly don’t inspire in me. Go back to your bed.”
Célia did as she was told, sniffling and sobbing. Diane knew she was being harsh: what could a six-year-old child possibly understand about all this business? But she was in such pain that her sister’s fate was a matter of complete indifference to her.
A few days later, on her way home from school, Diane had to make her way around a construction site, and she stepped out into the street. She saw a truck heading straight for her. Hypnotized by the speeding vehicle, she did not get out of the way. He braked too late and she was knocked down. The terrified driver called for help. He told the ambulance driver how oddly the little girl had behaved; fortunately, she was not seriously hurt.
It was Olivier who took the call from the hospital. He rushed over there and took his daughter in his arms.
“My darling, what happened?”
Diane told him she had been afraid and hadn’t had time to run back to the sidewalk.
“Promise me you’ll be more careful from now on.”
A doctor had been present during their meeting. When Olivier asked if he could take his daughter home, the doctor replied that he would rather keep her under observation until the following day. Once her father was gone, the doctor went to look at his young patient. He sensed she was smart enough that he could speak to her candidly.
“Do you want to live, or do you want to die?” he asked gravely.
Stunned, Diane opened her eyes wide. She sensed the question required an honest answer and she thought about it. After a minute she said, “I want to live.”
The doctor weighed her statement and eventually said, “I believe you. You can go home tomorrow.”
Diane spent the night in her hospital room thinking about his words. The doctor had asked her one question. The one she had not dared ask herself. Just by listening to her short conversation with her father, and observing her, he had understood. With one question he had changed her fate, not only because she had decided to live, but also because at last she had a goal: to practice this man’s profession.
She would become a doctor. She would observe people and listen to them carefully, she would probe their bodies and their souls. In the course of conversations as casual as the one she’d had with the doctor the night before, she would pinpoint what was wrong and save human lives. The lightning speed of her diagnoses would be astonishing.
To find a goal for oneself at the age of eleven changes everything. What did her lost childhood matter? What she wanted now was to become an adult so she could attain the sublime status of M.D. Life would lead to something important, it would no longer be a matter of putting up with absurd torment, because even suffering could serve to explore the suffering of her patients. What she had to do now was grow up.
In high school Diane saw her classmates give themselves over to the first throes of love. From one day to the next, boys and girls who had spent years playing ball together began to look at each other differently. At first, there were ties of evangelical simplicity. Then came the experience of breaking up, which inaugurated the era of complexity. What broke their hearts was not the end of the love story, but the speed with which an ex fell in love again. Some of them, out of pure diplomacy, played close to the vest. The situation became Machiavellian. You know longer knew where you stood.
That was how gossip got started. Who was dating who? And yet you were sure you saw Thingummy kiss Thingamajig. Yes, but that was yesterday. In the meantime a lot of water had flowed under the bridge.
Diane wondered whether her mother had not been right, in the end, to qualify her as cold. She looked down on all her friends’ little games. When girlfriends shared their secrets with her, she said, “You know it’s all just an act!” And her girlfriends would reply, “You’ll see, when it happens to you!”
As she was the prettiest girl in the class, she had her admirers. She turned down every single request point blank. She devoted most of her time to studying. She was constantly to be seen in the library, consulting biology books of discouraging proportions.
Her grandparents voiced their concern:
“You’re so serious. You should be out having fun with your friends.”
“I don’t like having fun. It’s boring.”
“You’ll dry up, all this time you spend with your nose in books.”
“I don’t feel like I’m drying up.”
And indeed, as she turned fourteen, every morning her beauty was more striking. She did not suffer from acne or adolescent puffiness; she grew in slenderness and wisdom. People who did not know her thought she must practice ballet, for her every gesture, however insignificant, seemed choreographed. She was always very well-groomed, and wore her black hair up in a chignon. In an era when girls thought it was the height of cool to come to class wearing ripped jeans and a flannel shirt, she wore the severe outfit of a city-dwelling classical ballerina.
“You are a borderline pain in the butt,” said Karine, who considered herself Diane’s most lucid friend.
“Why borderline?” was Diane’s enlightening response.
Disconcerted, the other adolescents respected her, but spoke to her less and less. But no one would ever have dared make fun of her, even in private: there was something about her that inspired fear and discouraged meanness.
Her mother was still the only individual who did not fall under the spell. One sign of progress was that Diane didn’t even try to please her anymore. When they saw each other on the weekend they simply greeted each other politely. It was not that the young woman had reached the level of indifference she aspired to, and which would have curtailed her suffering, or that Marie had stopped feeling a rush of jealousy at every flattering remark her eldest daughter received; it was simply that the nature of their bond was that of two spectators, and by no account that of two mutually engaged participants.
Diane’s love for her grandparents continued to grow, all the more so as they were beginning to decline. Her grandmother coughed from morning to night, and her grandfather’s cholesterol levels were alarming. She was sorry she was not already a doctor, to be able to look after them. She dreaded their death and feared she might not have her diploma by the time the tragedy occurred.
The lycée changed her life. For the first time, Diane saw new faces. She noticed a blonde girl with a lovely, haughty face. Karine whispered, “Look at that preppy girl!” She was wearing a white blouse and gray flannel slacks, as if she had to be in uniform. When the time came for introductions, the stranger spoke in a deep voice that Diane found incredibly classy:
“Élisabeth Second.”
Peals of laughter greeted her words. The teacher sighed:
“Your real name, Mademoiselle.”
“That is my real name. My parents are Monsieur and Madame Second. And, as they are not without a sense of humor, they called me Élisabeth.”
“Is that why you take yourself for the queen of England?” someone shouted.
“Well done, you’re only the 355th person to point that out to me,” she said with a smile.
Diane felt an unfamiliar sensation:
her soul expanded with enthusiasm and admiration. She hated being fourteen and a half years old, because she could no longer simply march up to Élisabeth and say, “Let’s be friends, okay?” She had to brave rejection and put in long periods of effort. Every time she asked her a question, the blonde girl answered with a monosyllable.
“Why bother,” said Karine, “we don’t belong to her world. What do you like about that idiot, anyway? Are you in love?”
“Yeah, really,” sighed Diane, rolling her eyes.
Élisabeth had come from a different collège, one that was much more upscale and where her mother was a math teacher. Her father was first violin at the Opéra. She did indeed belong to another world, and did not try to hide it.
“Doesn’t it bother you to hang out with hicks like us?” a boy in the class asked, head held high.
“No more than it bothers you to be in the company of royalty like me,” she replied.
Diane was flabbergasted by her replies. Indeed, how dare she hope for the friendship of someone so exceptionally witty and audacious? The vague affection she felt for Karine was nothing like the fervor that drew her to Élisabeth. She knew it wasn’t love, because it didn’t hurt in the same way it did with her mother. The pique she felt, that Élisabeth might not like her, merely made her want to fight to win her over.
Karine, who was green with jealousy, told her the place was already occupied:
“Her best friend is the daughter of the orchestra conductor at the Opéra. You haven’t got a chance.”
“What’s her name?”
“Véra,” she replied, as if to underline the crushing superiority of Diane’s rival.
As they left school that day, Diane saw Élisabeth throw her arms around a chubby dull blonde and cry, “Véra!” She decided all was not lost.
She pulled out all the stops. At every break she went to sit next to Élisabeth. One day she told her, deadly earnest, “You know, the Chernobyl cloud didn’t just stop at the border.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Our life expectancy is bound to be reduced because of the radiation. Let’s be friends.”
Strike Your Heart Page 4